3 . Check out these stories of some animals.

The cat Homer

Homer the blind cat weighs only four pounds. Gwen Cooper adopted him when he was three weeks old. One night his growling (狂吠) wakes up Cooper, He’s never growled before. Surprised, Cooper opens her eyes. A burglar is standing at the foot of her bed! Cooper reaches for her phone to call 911.

“Don’t do that!” the burglar says. The sound of his voice shows his exact location, and blind Homer leaps. No match for a cat with sharp claws, the would-be robber flees.

The dog Geo

Geo follows 10-year-old Charlie Rilcy everywhere. One day Charlie, his mom, and two younger brothers are standing at a street corner. Geo is sitting at Charlie’s side. Suddenly, an out-of-control truck is heading straight for Charlie!

But Geo makes a flying leap. “He hits me so hard that I fall over,” Charlie says. The speeding truck hits Geo instead. Geo is rushed to the animal hospital.

The dog Teddy

It’s 3 a.m. in West Jordan, Utah. A mother and two children stand outside as firefighters hose (用软管浇) water on their burning house. “Is anybody inside?” the firemen ask.

The mom says no, because she feels certain that her older son escaped out the back. But just to be sure, Don Chase and his partner plunge (冲入) through the flames to look.

And what do they find? Teddy the pet dog standing by the door. Chase reaches for him, but Teddy runs down the basement stairs. Midway down, he stops and waits. But just as the firemen reach him, he takes off again. “I’m really maddened.”Chase says. “We’re wasting time chasing a dog when we should be searching for human victims.”

Then they see him — the older son, unconscious on a basement couch. Grabbing his legs and chest, the astonished firemen move him to safety, as Teddy runs behind.

4 . Scientists have discovered a new structure that allows lunge feeding whales, also called rorqual whales (长须鲸), to take in massive amounts of water without choking.

To capture prey (猎物), rorqual whales use a method called lunge feeding. They speed up, and take in a volume of water large enough to fill their entire bodies.

Scientists didn’t know how these whales avoided choking on prey—filled water and flooding their respiratory tracts (呼吸道) during a lunge feeding event. Now Dr. Gil and his colleagues have discovered a large structure that they’ve termed the “oral plug” —a structure never before described in any other animal—that they think makes lunge feeding possible.

Dr. Gil and his colleagues analyzed dead fin whales. By physically dissecting (解剖) the mass of muscle and tissue that plug the back of the whale’s mouth, the researchers determined that when the animal is at rest, the plug blocks off the whale’s pharynx (咽道), a tube-shaped structure that leads to both the respiratory and digestive tracts. When a whale lunges, the “oral plug” protects both tracts from being flooded by the water and the living creatures that the animal has taken in.

When the animal is ready to swallow its latest meal, the oral plug shifts upward to protect the upper respiratory tract. At the same time, the larynx (喉) closes up and shifts downward, blocking the lower respiratory tract. In other words, during swallowing, the pharynx only leads to the digestive tract.

“This fills in a blank that we didn’t even know really existed,” said Dr. Gil of the team’s findings. Ari Friedlaender, who studies whale feeding behaviors at the University of California but was not involved in this research, sees great value in filling in these anatomical blanks about whales.

“The more we can understand how they develop these means for being able to eat so much, the more we understand about what their abilities are, and how they function as part of marine ecosystems,” Dr. Friedlaender said.

6 . Planetary changes which will have an influence on many are drawing near of the poor ecological state of the planet. Actually change has already begun through climate changes, but most humans haven’t noticed this yet. Climate change has begun to influence the world already and will begin to worsen within the near few years. Around 2020 most people will begin to see that the results of climate change will be far more serious than now understood.

As the planet is under big geological (地质的) stresses, which are continuously increasing, it will in the future no longer be able to support its population. Scarcity (缺) of resources, over-farming, lack of clean air, not enough clean drinking water and drought (旱灾) are some of the issues that will all play a much greater role in the near future.

Humans have caused large ecological devastation (破坏). The lifestyles of many people are changing at a fast speed; however, this will finally result in a shortage of some valuable resources. When this scarcity begins to happen, people will no longer be able to have sustainable (可持续的) lifestyles.

It’s important to understand that everyone plays a role in the whole process of life. Each person’s decision can finally affect the future. These decisions, all combined, can have a very good effect on what the future will be like for humans. So the future depends on the choices we make at the present moment.

While more and more people are becoming aware of climate change and other environmental problems related to global warming, not all are fully understanding how far-reaching its effects will be. Unfortunately, most of the humans realize that the planet isn’t functioning well, but they don’t understand that this is creating a major problem for the future survival of humans.

So, every person should make the necessary changes to reduce their influence on the environment and help create a more sustainable future.

A Nation of Animal Lovers

The British are traditionally a nation of animal lovers. This is clear from the large number of animal programmes on TV. There are programmes about wildlife in Britain and other countries, and about pets at home. There are programmes like Animal Hospital about sick animals and the working lives of animal doctors. Some programmes try to find new homes for unwanted or homeless animals. All these programmes are very popular. There is a pet in more than half of the homes in the UK(52.3%). The most popular pets are cats.

Battersea Dogs and Cats Home in London is a very famous home for unwanted dogs and cats. It was started in 1860 by Mrs. Mary Tealby, because she was worried about all the homeless animals on the streets of London. Since it opened, the home has taken in more than 3 million dogs and cats. In 2006, over 11,000 dogs and cats came to the home. By the end of the year, homes were found for 5,000 of them. The home even has its own magazine, Paws.

9 . While a lot of undergraduates live with loud roommates, 24-year-old Nikolai shares his home with over 600 noisy animals. It is no_______he is continuously getting interrupted.

Twenty years ago his parents bought a zoo in Denmark and started the first zoo and rescue centre for animals. Two years ago his dad unfortunately_______cancer and he was out on his own as a game developer. So he_______came home again to his mother to _______the zoo and attend to the 600 animals.

Owning a zoo is busywork with Nikolai taking on many _______: feeding, cleaning and playing with the animals. 600 animals may sound like _______but Nikolai actually wants the zoo to_______. He hopes to_______his parents’ goal and make it the greatest rescue centre for _______animals in all of Europe.

“As it is a rescue zoo, everything________a little bit differently than it did in the ________zoos. Because in general zoos, it usually has ________animals. We feel a need and a(n)________to help where we can. Thus, we ________the zoo into a rescue zoo instead,” Nikolai once said. And that means taking in animals that has been treated________or has been in laboratories. And some of our animals may have some scars and some________that we have to deal with or treat.

Having to support his mother and the zoo, Nikolai has come up with a________way to collect extra money: a mobile app game about the zoo. The game’s________will go to various charities. Nikolai believes the money ________will surely help realize his family’s ________of making their rescue centre the biggest.

10 . The heating of the planet is pushing Earth’s polar bear population to its limit, and according to a new study, they could have fewer than 100 years left before extinction.

The polar bears live by hunting seals in the Arctic Ocean, but as more and more ice melts (融化) in that region, their habitat continues to reduce. Since amounts began to be measured at the end of the 1970s, sea ice that lasts for more than a year in the Arctic has decreased at a rate of 13% per decade.

Studies have long shown that declining sea ice will lead to a decline in polar bears, but new research published in Nature Climate Change models a specific doomsday (世界末日) timeline. Polar bears will be unable to endure the effects of climate change over the next several decades, the scientists believe, and will be wiped out by 2100.

“What we’ve shown is that, first, we’ll lose the survival of cubs (幼崽), so cubs will be born, but the females won’t have enough body fat to produce milk to bring them along through the ice-free season, said Dr. Steven Amstrup, chief scientist of Polar Bears

International, to the BBC. “Any of us know that we can only go without-food for so long. That’s a biological reality for all species.”

The study estimated that, even in a situation where countries achieve a moderate (适中的) reduction in greenhouse gases, several populations of polar bears will disappear. But Amstrup emphasized that the animal can still persist (坚持) if climate change does not continue.

“Showing how imminent (迫在眉睫的) the threat is for different polar bear populations-is-another reminder that we must act now to head off the worst of future problems faced by us all,” he said. “The course we’re on now is not a good one, but if society gets its act together, we have time to save polar bears. And if we do, we will benefit the rest of life on Earth, including ourselves.”